Can Andrew Breitbart Save Hollywood?

Hollywood A-list actress and longtime “Law & Order” star Angie Harmon caused a bit of a stir recently when she made the following comments about our new president: “If I have anything to say against Obama, it’s not because I’m a racist, it’s because I don’t like what he’s doing as president, and anybody should be able to feel that way. But what I find now is that if you say anything against him, you’re called a racist.”

But Harmon’s brazen outburst of political incorrectness was just getting started. Here’s what she had to say about Barack Obama becoming the first sitting U.S. president to appear as a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”: “I do think McCain would have done a better job, only because I think he has more experience. I also think if W. or John McCain or Reagan would have gone and done a talk show, the backlash would have been so huge and in his face, and ‘What is our president doing? How unclassy!’ But Obama does it, and no one says anything.”

Want more? Here’s Harmon on the subject of Sarah Palin: “I admire any kind of woman like her. My whole motto is to know what I stand for and know what I don’t stand for and have the courage to live my life accordingly, and she does exactly that.”

WILLING TO TAKE A RISK

Yes, the rumors are true. After decades of cowering in the deep-blue (as in Blue State) shadows, Hollywood conservatives are beginning to openly express their political beliefs despite the price they’ve paid-both socially and professionally-for doing so in the past. Some are calling this newfound courage the Breitbart Effect, named for the affable New Media titan who exposed the amoral Superfund toxic waste site of Tinsel Town by subjecting it to the standards of traditional, conservative (read: normal) American values.

Through his pioneering work on news aggregation Web sites such as the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post, Breitbart led the charge away from the take-it-or-leave-it company store of monolithic network news and toward the consumer-driven free market of the New Media. How important was it to break up this monopoly? Before there was a New Media, Dan Rather’s “CBS Evening News” “exposé” about George W. Bush’s National Guard service (complete with forged documents) would have gone unchallenged-and Dan Rather would still have a career. Because of New Media and outlets such as Drudge, Rather’s inept hoax was discovered-and shared with the world-within a matter of hours.